Lebanon: Terror, Death and Exodus

Even on relatively quiet days during the 14-month Lebanon civil war, nothing was quite as eerie -and as frightening -as the ride from one side of divided Beirut to the other, through a half mile of no man's land along the broad Corniche Mazraa that was no one's preserve but the snipers'. Dozens of people were killed and kidnaped during transit to a crossing point cynics called "Mandelbaum Gate"*: only intrepid souls risked it during periods of fighting when the final stretch had to be negotiated at nothing less than 70 m.p.h. Last week two American diplomats, Ambassador Francis E. Meloy Jr. and Economic Counselor Robert O. Waring, as well as their Lebanese chauffeur-bodyguard, dared the nightmare drive -and were gunned down somewhere between the front lines.

Flag-Draped Coffins. The killing of the ambassador, the fourth U.S. envoy to have died at the hands of assassins in the past eight years (see box), triggered an order by President Gerald Ford to evacuate any U.S. citizen from Lebanon who wished to leave. With Beirut airport closed, the mode would be a convoy to Damascus, about 90 miles away via back roads, presumably under the protection of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the first phase of the trip, the Syrian army, which has occupied much of Lebanon, over the second stage. An 18-vehicle trial run organized by the British embassy brought some 70 British subjects and a few Americans safely out of Lebanon. It also carried the flag-draped aluminum coffins of Meloy and Waring. They had been seen off by a U.S. embassy Marine Honor Guard -in dress blues -and British embassy officials. Though the British column, at first with P.L.O., then Syrian troop escort, was briefly caught in crossfire, it reached Damascus safely.

At the time of the Ford decision, 50 Americans attached to the embassy and some 1,400 other American citizens remained in Beirut; more than 6,000 had left over the past year of strife. Still, Washington's order did not amount to outright evacuation; it simply "strongly urged" Americans to leave -part of a relatively low-key approach that envisaged the use of U.S. military force only as a last resort. The President called the killings a "senseless, outrageous brutality," but he also declared that the U.S. would not be "deterred from its search for peace by these murders." Throughout, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was in touch with Middle East leaders by cable, urging safe passage for any American convoy. One such convoy of about 150 people formed up but at week's end was temporarily postponed for security reasons.

Worst Case. If there were risks in the convoy scenario, they seemed alleviated by a formidable military backup. On station for a possibly larger evacuation operation, a "worst case scenario" in Pentagonese, were the carriers America and Guadalcanal, as well as at least half a dozen other ships of two special Sixth Fleet task forces; early in the week the Air Force had shuttled four CH-53 helicopters and three C-130 transports into the British airbase at Akrotiri in Cyprus, an hour's flight from Beirut.

While the convoy was on the road, A-7 fighter-bombers, in the air off the coast, were on call in case the column came under attack. When the options for evacuation were discussed in the White House, General George Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained that a civilian-style helicopter ferry would be impossible; any helicopter evacuation would have to be a fullblown military undertaking -and that would be provocative.

With American and Soviet ships hovering off the Lebanese coast, with routine Israeli naval patrols operating in the area and with Syrian vessels sealing off Lebanese ports, the air waves of the Eastern Mediterranean crackled with the ships' radio and electronic chatter. "It is crowded as hell out there," said an Israeli intelligence official, "even if you cannot see them all together."

Meloy, 59, a reserved and well-respected career diplomat who had arrived in Beirut only five weeks before, after serving in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, posts the State Department considers to be high-risk jobs, was on the way to his first call on Lebanese President-elect Elias Sarkis when disaster struck. Because Lebanon's discredited President Suleiman Franjieh still clings to office, despite the fact that Sarkis has already been chosen to succeed him, Meloy had not yet presented his credentials -a move generally interpreted as a U.S. nudge to Franjieh to step down. Together with Waring, 56, a Lebanon veteran since 1972 and the father of four children, and driver-bodyguard Zohair Moghrabi, Meloy set out from the U.S. embassy, situated in Moslem-dominated West Beirut, for the drive to Hazmieh, a Christian-controlled suburb where Sarkis keeps a home. Initially, a chase car manned by three Lebanese security men from the embassy trailed his light green, partially armored Chevrolet Impala, but dropped away before the entry into no man's land -apparently because Christian militiamen on the other side had insisted that only one car pass. Meloy's car moved through the last checkpoint on the Moslem side -and never reached the first Christian barricade. Somewhere between the two checkpoints, at a spot not visible to either side, the car was stopped by gunmen in what appeared to be a carefully planned operation: the three men were dragged from the vehicle and killed by a volley of shots. For a while the embassy did not know that something had gone wrong: a garbled message over the car's two-way radio had been falsely interpreted as indicating that Meloy and his companions had reached their destination safely. The first sign that something was amiss came when Driver Moghrabi's wife received a phone call advising her that her husband and two other men had been kidnaped. Several hours later three bodies were found on a huge pile of garbage close to the seashore, where a new American embassy building is under construction, at least two miles from where the ambassador was last seen alive. One of the first at the scene was Jean D. Hoefliger, the International Red Cross delegate in Lebanon. Lifting the bloody blankets in which the bodies were wrapped, he recognized Meloy. At his behest the bodies were taken to a nearby Red Cross field hospital and covered with Red Cross flags while Hoefliger informed embassy officials of his discovery. "They were shocked into silence," he told TIME'S Dean Brelis.

A Martyr. Who were the killers? The P.L.O., which has long accused the U.S. of complicity in the Lebanon conflict (though armed units under its control have actually been guarding the U.S. embassy), expressed shock. "He is a martyr too," said one Palestinian of Meloy. "I'm sorry." While Kissinger asserted that a "Palestinian splinter group trying to prevent moderation" in the Middle East was thought to be behind the killings, the joint command of the Lebanese left and the fedayeen announced that Palestinian security officers had arrested three men who were said to have confessed to involvement in the killings; they would be handed over to a Pan-Arab peace-keeping force that is to take up positions in Lebanon this week. According to some sources, the men belonged to the extremist Lebanese Socialist Revolutionary Front; the group, a tiny urban guerrilla outfit, gained notoriety in 1973 when it took over a Bank of America branch in Beirut, seized 56 hostages and eventually killed an American and four Lebanese before being overwhelmed by police.

Though the killings were a blunt reminder that Beirut remained as bloodily unpredictable as ever (see box), they came at a time when the crisis in Lebanon appeared to have toned down slightly. In the wake of Syria's massive and much maligned intervention (TIME, June 21), Arab League Secretary-General Mahmoud Riad consulted with President Franjieh and persuaded him to accept the presence of the Arab peace-keeping force alongside Syrian units, a proposal the Christian right-wing factions had at first rejected. Riad said the force would eventually comprise between 6,000 and 10,000 troops and would only be used to apply and supervise a ceasefire. At the same time Libyan Premier Abdul Salam Jalloud reported progress in separate mediation efforts between the warring factions. A call by P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat for Arab and African "volunteers" to fight the Syrian invasion appeared to have fallen on deaf ears.

Stabilizing Positions. Indeed, the situation looked stable enough to Syrian President Hafez Assad to embark on a two-day state visit to France, a long-planned journey that was postponed in March because of the Lebanon crisis. By now Assad's troops in Lebanon numbered more than 15,000 men, and while they were not engaged in much fighting during the week, they consolidated positions, tightening their hold, specifically on the approaches to Beirut. A Syrian armored thrust overran the strategic town of Rachaya, about 15 miles from the Israeli frontier and the gateway to "Fatah land," the rugged southeastern part of the country that has long been a staging area for fedayeen raids against Israel. The Israelis reacted coolly: Defense Minister Shimon Peres said that "the Syrian intervention does not endanger Israel's security."

With Syrian ground forces in control of Beirut airport and the port of Tripoli, and Syrian missile boats sealing off the ports of Sidon and Tyre against arms and ammunition resupply-for leftist and Palestinian forces, both Arafat and the leader of the Lebanese left, Kamal Jumblatt, were under pressure to come to an accommodation. Beirut remained under Syrian siege, its food and gasoline supplies severely depleted, its hospitals filled with the victims of continuing sporadic fighting between right and left. If the end was not in sight, Assad's pressure gamble appeared to be making slow headway. "Middle East crises have a habit of zigging and zagging unexpectedly," cabled TIME Middle East Correspondent Wilton Wynn from Damascus, "but for the moment Assad seems to be ahead of the game."

* After the crossing point between Israeli and Jordanian territory in pre-1967 Jerusalem.

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